I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.

Friday, January 30, 2015

Professor Badri Raina is a canny writer whose obervations go deeper
than merely embellishing some news for entertaining the Indian crowds.
This is evident in his present article.

Obama represents the power of US
imperialism and he is the president of US. But people like Modi may have
miscalculated that the guy is in his pocket as a Hindutva devotee who
is living far away from his Mother Country whose glorious children are
scattered worldwide! So much chutzpah for Indian-ness, without
realising that a foreign head of state should be treated according to
the usual protocol, without owning him or her!

Then there comes in our Indian-ness.
‘He is just one of us!’ ‘The two are just like our own!' Oh, really?
Obama must have been honoured with such adulation, no doubt!

But naivete and stupidity have no
anchorage or limit. If Obama and Michelle’s looks were the point of
focus then they certainly look like some of our Indo-Pakistani people
who are dark-skinned, 'low- caste' people such as Dalits, the Dravadian
races or swarthy, flat-nosed old tribals whose miserable lives have not
changed much in the last three thousand years.

BHO has a long tongue and
some knowledge as well. He was not ensnared by Modi’s antics. By the way, we don’t see such patronising attitude extended to other
black African people as own lost children in the Dark Continent!

Badri has poured some water of sanity
on the issue and not followed our leaders to ‘re-baptise’ Obama and his
wife in the Vedic faith and embellish them in the saffron chaders and
dhotis but first rubbing some cow dung on their foreheads to complete
the sacred initiation into the Hindufold!——————-

Obama: he came, he saw, he gave advice

Obama spent three whole days in India. He
was welcomed like one of our own, complete with huggy hugs and the
intimacy of first naming, even if one-sided, the erudite Indian Chief
Executive going even to the extent of telling him the meaning of his
first name, Barack, which now we know means “the one who is blessed.”
The 1894 triumph was mentioned—that telling moment when our
Vivekananda took the Parliament of Religions at Chicago by storm and
taught the world a thing or two about the pre-eminence of our Vedas.
Coming as he does from the very same Chicago, Obama had had the wit to
present to the visiting Indian Prime Minister a year or so ago a
compilation of the speeches made at that watershed event in Chicago a
century and a quarter back where Vivekananda “proved” to the semitic
world how the Vedas were the mother of all faiths, and how being Hindu
meant being universal.

Just when the Obama visit was going so swimmingly, bathed in the
glow of the Vedas and sundry saffron accoutrement, imagine what this
Obama fellow, during an address to India’s aspirating youth, proud of
the Vedic yore, even if by hearsay, but yearning for a Yankee future,
chose to do: as if poking a finger in the Hindutva eye, this Obama
made bold to say how “Michelle and I have been strengthened by our
Christian faith.” No ghar vapsi (i.e. return to the all-encompassing
original faith) there, you might well say, Vivekananda or no
Vivekananda. Was he also insinuating that it might be wrong to vandalise
churches etc.? In other words, teaching us tolerance on our own
tolerant soil. Fingers crossed. We need his technology.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

The majority of Pakistanis lived in East Pakistan. In 1971 they
liberated their part of the country from the economic and political
domination and exploitation of West Pakistani ruling elite, capitalists
and established their independent country, Bangladesh. So half of
Pakistan had ceased to exist in 1971. Thus West Pakistan became Pakistan
in 1971! It was no longer the Pakistan of 1947.

Now what happens in Pakistan is all too obvious to all observers.
Sindhis don’t like it; they want their independent homeland, Sindhu
Land. Balochis want to have their independence. The Pashtuns have no
interest in this Pakistan. Mohajirs don’t like this Pakistan. Now when
it comes to its neighbours, India and Afghanistan, they don’t like
Pakistan either. In fact, Pakistan has been regarded as the Number One
Enemy by Indian rulers and the vast majority of Hindu Indians.

But Pakistani mullahs, Taliban, landlords and industrialists have
their stakes to keep this Pakistan going as long they can – all for
their own specific objectives. The mullahs, the Taliban, Islamists of
Jamaat-e-Islami, sickly fanatics and Islamic fundamentalists want it so
that they can impose their Islamic Caliphate and the Sharia laws.

The idea of the Sharia laws in popular imagination of Pakistanis is a
simple one: Cutt off the hands of a thief and that will lead to a just
Islamic system in the country – almost a Paradise on Earth!

For the industrialists and landlords this Pakistan gives them better opportunities for exploiting the resources and the people.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Nasir Khan: It is the overall US patronage of the House of Saud
that keeps the medieval despots in Riyadh in their palaces and enables
thousands of Saudi princes to control every aspect of the desert
kingdom. Human rights, rule of law and gender equality, etc, are unknown
notions for the ruling dynasty. When an ordinary blogger, Raif Baidawi,
wrote that the people in this country should be able to express their
view on matters of common concern he was falsely charged with insulting
Islam and given 1000 lashes as punishment for his views. Such is the
country that is America’s closest ally and strategic partner in the
Middle East after Israel. That speaks abundantly about the US policies
in the Middle East.

————-

Barack Obama assembles 27-strong delegation to pay respects to Saudi Arabia's new king

US president cuts short official visit to India and cancel his visit to Taj Mahal with wife Michelle

Barack Obama is travelling with a 27-strong delegation to cement ties
with the new king of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday as concerns over Yemen and the Islamic State take centre stage in the increasingly volatile region.

Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, Republican hawk
senator John McCain and General Lloyd Austin, head of US Central Command
forces in the region, are among the surprise additions to a hastily
organised trip that has drawn critical comparisons with the US failure to send any senior figures to Paris following recent terrorist attack.

Friday, January 23, 2015

All the devils in Hell were much excited today to welcome a newcomer.
Guess who was coming? A great king was coming to join them. When the
short worldly sojourn ends here a long and upward journey to a new life
starts, I was told as a child. Today was one such day for a great king
to go upward.

So that was the end of that short worldly sojourn for the mighty
king. There will be no more displays of gold, diamonds and emeralds to
please any. That will be a task for his successor now. But any fabulous
gifts of golden chains and garlands with diamonds were only for the
influential and the mighty ones. Not for any ordinary people. No worker
from Asia or Africa received any such gift. They were mere workers, the
raw material to keep the oil industry going.

The children of Gaza, hundreds of them, and thousands of adults were
massacred by Israel in the summer of 2014. There was not a single
concrete step taken by the great mighty king of Saudi Arabia to stop the
killing of the Palestinians of Gaza. Netanyahu knew the great king was
his ally, not an opponent. So the job of killing a besieged people and
destroying Gaza’s infrastructure – its buildings, homes, hospitals,
mosques – and causing misery in a captive people could go ahead
unhindered. And it did.

Netanyahu wanted to do it. He had the support of America and his Arab
allies, including the mighty king. So Israel did what it wanted to do.
The reactionaries were all on one side. They had no fear from any
quarter. Everything was crystal clear for the kill, the big kill. No
problem. Some voices around the world? Some bloggers and internet
activists included. But who cares when you have America and Saudi Arabia
on board. Therefore when Israeli military and air force were in ‘full
action’ the great king, didn’t stir a finger to stop the massacres and
destruction of Gaza.

But his friends may have some thing to add. I have nothing more to add today. Sometimes later perhaps.

Nasir Khan, January 23, 2015Some people like George W
Bush, for instance, also believe in a Loving God. But he invaded Iraq
and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and destroyed a great
country. Now he continues to assert not only what did was right but also
that God had asked him to invade Iraq. It is obvious that warmongers
and powerful rulers exploit and misuse the name of God that has
different names in different languages or religions for their political
and military objectives. Unfortunately, God does not stop them from
doing so. So, there is no point in complaining about some attributes of
God when in reality we should be more concerned with those who commit
the crimes against others and our struggle to stop them. The faults lies
with us, not God. (Here I am using the term 'God' that is commonly
understood by the vast majority of people in the world. Whether there is
any such entity or not is a different question that people may discuss
at length in some other place.)

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Nasir Khan, January 20, 2015Maulana Azad, the Imam-al-Hind, was an outstanding Islamic scholar, a
great orator and a prominent political leader of India during the
British rule. He opposed the idea of the partition of India on the basis
of religion and warned Muslim leaders of the dangers of a separate
homeland for Muslims. This great scholar understood the problems Indian
Muslims faced if the demands of an Islamic country (Pakistan) were accepted. The events leading to the partition
of India in 1947 and the subsequent history of Pakistan have shown the
political sagacity and far-sightedness of this astute politician. But
the upholders of the two-nation theory had won and the secularists and
advocates of a united India had to agree to the partition plan.

However,
it will be a lopsided view to blame only Jinnah. Many sections of
Muslim community had fears of Hindu domination in an independent state
of a united India. The top Hindu leaders, Gandhi and Nehru, did little
to assuage such fears. As British historian Perry Anderson in 2012 in
his three profound historical articles, ‘Gandhi Centre Stage,’ ‘Why
Partition,’ and ‘After Nehru,’ had shown the situation was really quite
complicated and any simplistic interpretations of history of the period
that are quite common in India and Pakistan are of little value except
for amateurish recriminations and misrepresentation of historical facts
of the period. —————

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Perceptions and Misperceptions of Islam

Nasir Khan, January 18, 2015

In the wake of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo’s publishing
of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that many Muslims world-wide
regard derogatory and provocative, and the killings of the staff of the
weekly and international reactions to these events, I am posting the
‘preface’ to my book ‘Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms: A
Historical Survey (2006)’. This book provides a historical context of
perceptions of Islam for the last thirteen/ fourteen centuries.

This book is a historical survey of the views and perceptions of
Islam that emerged in the Christendoms from the eight-century to the
present time. My main purpose has been to investigate the historical
role of the polemical writings of Christian writers who confronted Islam
as a religious and political enemy of Christianity on the basis of
their own theological pre-commitments. Consequently, they succeeded in
creating and reinforcing a distorted picture of Islam that became deeply
rooted in the culture and psyche of the West, and had far reaching
consequences for the relations between the power-blocs of Christianity
and Islam since the Middle Ages.
During my research-work on this theme over a number of years, I became
aware that, although, some prominent Western scholars and historians
such as Sir Richard Southern, William Montgomery Watt, Albert Hourani,
Norman Daniel, Bernard Lewis and Maxime Rodinson, have made enormous
contribution to our understanding of the Western attitudes towards Islam
in the Middle Ages, there was a need for a full survey of such views
and perceptions over the last fourteen centuries of Christian-Muslim
encounters. To meet this need, I undertook this historical survey, and
have broadened both the subject matter and the time span for this book.
In order to cover a wide range of issues within the compass of a single
volume I also had to delimit the number of polemicists and other writers
who wrote on Islam. However, instead of a cursory mention of some of
the leading Christian apologists of the early centuries, I have given
them more space within the following major geographical divisions and
specific polemical tradition: (a) the Oriental Christians under Muslim
rule, (b) the Byzantine Empire, (c) Catholic Spain under the Muslim
rule, and (d) the Catholic West and Protestant countries. I have used
original texts, wherever possible, for the exposition of these writers’
views. In this way, these writers speak for themselves. My reason for
following this approach was the conviction that we can best comprehend
the history of Christian-Muslim encounters from the early times by
examining concrete circumstances and particular writers whose views
became influential in shaping the attitude of one religious tradition
towards the other.
viii
I have made frequent use of direct quotations from both the primary
sources and the secondary literature. Moreover, I have tried to place
anti-Islamic polemic within the context of major historical events and
movements. On the other hand, I have not thought it appropriate to refer
to all the vulgar calumnies of the apologists directed against the
Prophet Muhammad and Islam, specific charges that might shock the
sensibilities of a reader, no matter what his or her own orientation
towards religion orthe founders of religions. Still, it is possible that
some may feel offended. But historical facts have to be faced as they
stand. If I had omitted all such horrid views, I would have missed the
whole point of explaining how the distorted images of Islam took shape.
Every writer is a product of the social and cultural matrix of his age.
The polemical writers against Islam had their own theological
presuppositions, convictions and concerns. In a like manner, such
pre-commitments do not disappear in modern writers either. For instance,
Professor Montgomery Watt, a priest of the Episcopal Church of
Scotland, and Dr Norman Daniel, a committed Catholic, who have written
with great sympathy and understanding a number of scholarly works on
Islam, are also believers in the ultimate truth of Christianity, that
is, its fundamental dogmas. As a result, when it comes to the question
of judging the fundamental Islamic belief in the unity of Godhead, they
measure it against the doctrine of the Trinity. Since the two
theological doctrines seem to be at variance with each other, they
uphold and justify the Trinity to be the truth about One God. It can
readily be admitted that such a perspective, deeply subjective as it
inevitably is, is difficult to avoid or overcome.
At the same time, I am aware that any attempt to answer questions about
the truth or falsity of a belief or religious doctrine falls beyond the
scope of historical analyses. But this does not mean that a historian
should also avoid the question of how and why some belief arose and in
what ways it has influenced society. What, to a believer, may be an
unquestionable and sacrosanct truth is very often shaped and conditioned
by social and cultural traditions. In the final analysis, such
phenomena are a matter of belief, opinion and perspective, very often
seconded by an appeal to authority in one shape or the other. I make no attempt to adjudicate
between any opposing theological formulations, interpretations or
claims. My approach to such controversial issues is primarily
historical. Apart from pointing to some obvious
ix
logical inconsistencies that I have come across in the arguments of
polemicists, I have not analysed the rationale of their religious or
theological presuppositions, nor have offered any alternate solutions. I
have also intentionally avoided any discussion or critique of religious
propositions in their various forms, which nevertheless can
meaningfully be subjected to a rational scrutiny in analytic philosophy.
But the question of Christian theological presuppositions has an
important bearing on historiography. Some modern Christian historians,
who, in the last few decades have looked at the history of the
misperceptions of Islam in the West, have been and are committed to the
truth of Christian dogmas. Apart from giving traditional explanations
about how these sacred dogmas have roots in the New Testament, and were
given definitive formulations and shape by the Fathers of the Church,
they simply gloss over modern research in the history of early
Christianity that has thrown new light on how Christian dogmas came into
existence. As such important bodies of research have remained confined
only to a small community of specialists and academics, most readers are
unaware of their existence. I find laudable the historical inquiries, approach and concerns that have solely focused
on the theme of the Western attitudes to Islam. Nevertheless they fall
short of presenting a full picture. My own view is that to understand
Christian-Muslim encounters in the theological sphere, of which the
polemical writings of the Christians form only a part, the reader should
also have a clear historical picture of how the Christian dogmas
evolved, because these became the theological presuppositions of
Christian belief and the criteria for repudiating Islam and the
prophetic mission of Muhammad. This also enables us to compare the
standpoints of two religious traditions towards each other, and thus we
can situate the polemical views in their proper place and settings. In
this light, I have presented the history of the rise of Christianity and
the conflicts in the early Church in the first two chapters of this
book. These form an essential part of the present book for understanding
the subsequent attitudes in the Christendoms towards other faiths. But
they can also be read on their own. They deal with an immensely exciting
area for study and reflection. Due to the shortage of space, I have
presented only in a summary form the views and results of the research
of some leading scholars on the history of the early Church. I believe
that this information will enable readers to form their own opinion on
how Christianity’s doctrines evolved and assess their role as essential
presuppositions that played a major part in shaping the outlook of
x
Christian apologists towards Islam in a wider historical perspective. It
also shows how religious doctrines about the realm beyond the material
world are conceived and shaped by human agency.
What are the Qur’anic views of Jesus and the Christian dogmas?
Unfortunately, even some of those Western writers who have approached
Islam with greater sympathy have hesitated to bring forth openly what
the Qur’an says on the matter, while some others have offered their
interpretation of the Qur’an with a view to defending Christian dogmas
for which one finds little support in the Qur’an. Obviously, such views
are motivated to defend and preserve what one believes to be the true
dogmas. In Chapter 5, I have outlined the Qur’anic views of Jesus and
some of the Christian dogmas. Whether or not one agrees with these views
is the least of my concerns, but the Qur’anic texts are quite explicit
on these points, and it is only fair that the Qur’anic perspective as an
expression and culmination of pure monotheism should be judged on the
basis of what it clearly proclaims.
It is commonly assumed that one’s religious beliefs are not subject to
any objective scrutiny or assessment, but that does not mean that common
sense and basic principles of logic presupposed in all human thought
and discourse should be discarded to uphold what to a believer may be a
‘religious truth’. Neither am I advocating that the dogmas of one
religious tradition in some esoteric way are superior to or better than
the other. Intellectual honesty requires that a proposition that is
logically inconsistent and contradictory should not be passed on as
logically valid.
In the case of both Christianity and Islam, an old monotheistic
tradition is their common root and denominator. But how did the concept
of One God and his attributes come to be looked at and interpreted in
two religions, and set them up at odds against each other? Obviously,
the emphasis had shifted to highlighting their differences, not their
many similarities and agreements.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

If the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik (for more on Breivik, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik)
were a Muslim, then all Muslims would have been blamed for his crime
and the lives of Muslim population of Norway made a living hell. (I live
in Norway and I had seen how the Muslim people of Norway, including
myself as a humanist and secularist [!], were blamed and treated
in the wake of September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States of
America. It was as if Muslims from Norway had attacked the Twin Towers
in New York and they suddenly had to face the hatred, revulsion and
hostility of so many native Norwegians against them.)

But Breivik was a white Norwegian, a
white supremacist, an anti-Muslim ‘Knights Templar’ and a cold-blooded
killer. Therefore no one ascribed his crime to the Norwegian people or
to Christianity. That’s how we categorise ‘our terrorists’ and ‘their
terrorists’ so differently. Such is the nature of bigotry that rules the
passions of many people who have traditional ethno-religious blinkers.

Anders Behring Breivik (Norwegian pronunciation:
[ˈɑnːəʂ ˈbeːrɪŋ ˈbrɛiviːk];[6] born 13 February 1979) is the perpetrator
of the 2011 Norway attacks. On 22 July 2011, he bombed government
buildings in Oslo, killing eight people. He then killed 69 more people,
mostly teenagers, in a mass shooting at…

Thursday, January 08, 2015

Any person who commits a premeditated murder is held accountable for
culpable homicide under the rules of criminal law. If any such murderer
thinks his actions are in the service of some cause or has some other
motives then he will still stand accused of the crime of unlawful
killing. Only a court of law can find out about all the surrounding
circumstances including the state of mind or the intention of the accused, in legalese the mens rea of the crime to ascertain his guilt.

The abominable killings of twelve
people in Paris by two men who are still at large has shaken the
conscience of the world. That is a good thing that the world has reacted in
this way. But unfortunately the world does not always react in this way
when some powerful countries attack and kill innocent people in
hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands.

At the same time, it is also
important to remember that the actions of these two men in no way can be
ascribed to other people who by religion are Muslims and are spread all
over the world. It is very easy for the media and some officials to
blame Muslims and their religion, Islam, for any ghastly crimes by some
individuals.

In fact, the Paris killings are
already being used by anti-Muslim forces to spread hatred and hostility
against the Muslim people, who have nothing to do with these murders.
The tragedy of the Paris murders should not be used to provoke hostility
towards innocent Muslim people.

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Today’s cold-blooded massacre of 12 people was a deeply shocking,
reprehensible and horrible massacre of journalists and employees of
Charlie Weekly. The misguided killers have committed the most despicable
crime in the name of a great religious figure.

But countless millions of ordinary,
peace-loving and hard-working Muslims around the word have nothing to do
with these criminals and murderers. There is also the danger of
inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions because many neo-Nazis,
political extremists and right-wingers in Europe will use the tragic
killings to stir hatred against Muslim communities living in European
countries, put the blame on Muslims and provoke people against them.

Let’s hope and pray that all people
with religious and non-religious affiliations and identities stand
united and condemn the Paris murders and uphold the banner of freedom of
expression and speech for all, everywhere. No religious maniacs,
hoodlums or murderers should be allowed to dictate and impose their
barbaric views on free and secular people and societies.

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

There has been no tangible move to resolve the Kashmir issue that
had started at the partitioning of India in 1947 when the British raj
came to an end there. Soon military hostilities started between the two
new neighbours, India and Pakistan, over the princely State of Jammu and
Kashmir. It was only through the UN mediation that the hostilities
between the two countries were brought
to an end and the parties occupying the areas were accepted as de facto
powers. The temporary border-line between these powers was demarcated as
the Line of Control.

However, the parties agreed to hold plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir
to ascertain the will of the people, whether they would join India,
Pakistan or become independent. That promise has remained unfilled.
Despite resorting to military confrontations that led to much bloodshed
and misery, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have been the main victims.

During the period of insurgency against the Indian rule in Kashmir
some 100,000 (India says around 70,000) people were killed. At his time
there are some 700,000 Indian soldiers in Kashmir to suppress the people
who are asking for the end of the Indian rule and demanding their
freedom (Azaadi).

But India has a different view of the conflict. According to this
view Jammu and Kashmir are an ‘integral part of India’ and there is no
problem in Jammu and Kashmir except for the terrorists operating there
with the help of Pakistani authorities and militant groups.

Monday, January 05, 2015

Editor’s remarks:In this article
eminent scholar and peace activist Richard Falk shows the delusional
side of the liberal Zionism and debunks all the claims made by its vocal
advocates. His penetrating analysis cuts across the deception and
misleading projections that are tossed around as a way forward in the
present situation. Diverse views and opinions offered by the liberal
Zionists are meant to cover-up the designs of the Israeli government and
facilitate the expansionist policies in the West Bank by illegal
settlements and marginalising the Palestinians to the extant that they
have nothing left but to accept what the occupier decides for them. It
is easy to see that the ‘two-state solution’ has been a useful tool in
the hands of Israel while expanding its illegal settlements and thus
making a viable Palestinian state virtually impossible if it didn’t
relinquish the land it occupied in 1967. We have to keep in mind that
Israel has not planted 600,000 militant Jewish settlers in the West Bank
with the idea of dislodging them at some time. On the contrary, they
have been put there as an essential part of the colonisation of the
occupied Palestine. Their numbers are increasing and new settlements are
expanding. The Palestinians have hopes and aspirations for
self-determination and creating a sovereign state in their own land. But
Israel has the military power and the backing of the United States to
impose its will on a captive people.

Frustrated by Israeli settlement
expansion, excessive violence, AIPAC maximalism, Netanyahu’s arrogance,
Israel’s defiant disregard of international law, various Jewish
responses claim to seek a middle ground. Israel is criticized by this
loyal opposition, sometimes harshly, although so is the Palestinian
Authority, Hamas, and activists around the world. Both sides are deemed
responsible in equal measure for the failure to end the conflict. With
such a stance liberal Zionists seek to occupy the high moral ground
without ceding political relevance. In contrast, those who believe as I
do that Israel poses the main obstacle to achieving a sustainable peace
are dismissed by liberal Zionists as either obstructive or unrealistic,
and at worst, as anti-Israeli or even anti-Semitic.Listen to the funding appeals of J Street or read such columnists in
the NY Times as Roger Cohen and Thomas Friedman to grasp the approach of
liberal Zionism. These views are made to appear reasonable, and even
just, by being set off against such maximalist support for Israel as
associated with AIPAC and the U.S. Congress, or in the NY Times context
by comparison with the more conservative views of David Brooks (whose
son currently serves in the IDF) who published a recent ‘balanced’
column lionizing Netanyahu, “The Age of Bibi” [Jan. 2, 2014]. Of all the
deformed reasoning contained in the column, perhaps the most scandalous
was comparing Netanyahu to Churchill, and to suggest that his story has
the grandeur that bears a resemblance to Shakespeare’s MacBeth, an
observation that many would find unflattering.

Sunday, January 04, 2015

Editor’s comment: Salman Taseer was the governor
of the Punjab Province, Pakistan. He stood for justice, religious
toleration and the protection of the rights of religious minorities. He
voiced his opposition to the victimization of innocent Christians who
were falsely accused of insulting Islam and the Qur’an by some goons and
were tried under the Blasphemy Laws of Pakistan. The governor’s
bodyguard, a religious fanatic, killed him. While
thousands of people were appalled by this ghastly assassination of a
noble person, hundreds of thousands of fanatic people and mullahs in
Pakistan openly supported the murderer and held demonstrations in his
favour. Such is the social and political reality of Pakistan where
dogmatic indoctrination has paralysed people in the last few decades.
Gone are the days of humane thinking and respect for other peoples’
differing views or outlook.

Salman Taseer was certainly not a leader of the
masses. He didn’t have the charisma of Bhutto or the populist support of
Benazir. He was, however, a man who believed in a liberal Pakistan.
PHOTO: FILE

January 4 and 5 are two days that every PPP (Pakistan Peoples
Party) supporter will remember, but for two very different reasons.
January 5 is the birthday of their enigmatic party founderZulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
January 4, on the other hand, remains one of the darkest days in our
history of political murders – a day that is, surprisingly, not spoken
of enough.

January 4, 2011, was the day when the serving Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer,
was shot dead by his guard, because the guard was in disagreement with
Taseer’s opposition to the blasphemy law. Salman Taseer’s assassin was a
man called Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, reportedly a member of Dawat-e-Islami.

Thursday, January 01, 2015

Editor’s comment: The rejection of the Palestinian
resolution in the Security Council was expected because of the role of
American power in the world and also in the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC). There was hardly any indication of any change in the US
policy in the UNSC. But in case of more favourable voting in favour of
the resolution, the US would have vetoed it. Such has been the standard
US practice in the UNSC on numerous occasions when any matter
came up regarding Israel’s violations of human rights or violence
against the Palestinians in the occupied land. In any case, the US has
been pivotal in supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine for many
decades and it will continue to do so because of the power of Israel and
Israeli lobby on the US Governemnt and the US Congress. Therefore,
America is the main hurdle to the Palestinians’ right to
self-determination, the guarantor of the continued Israeli occupation of
Palestine and its firm supporter for the oppression, suppression and
enslavement of the people of Palestine.

UNITED NATIONS — The Security Council rejected a Palestinian
resolution demanding an end to Israeli occupation within three years
late Tuesday, a blow to an Arab campaign to get the U.N.’s most powerful
body to take action to achieve an independent state of Palestine.

The United States, Israel’s
closest ally, had made clear its opposition to the draft resolution,
insisting on a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the
Palestinians, not an imposed timetable. It would have used its veto if
necessary but it didn’t have to because the resolution failed to get the
minimum nine “yes” votes required for adoption by the 15-member
council.